Damage
Combat usually results in damage to many characters involved. The potential damage of an attack is represented by its damage modifier, with the target’s ability to sustain to the damage represented by his Toughness Resistance. Overcoming a target's Toughness resistance results in injuries or worse. Toughness An attacker who scores a successful hit on a target then rolls his damage and checks his result against his target's Toughness resistance score. Consult the Toughness skill's Degrees of Success to determine the results of a damaging attack. See Damage Conditions below for more. Pulling Your Punches Attackers can choose to use less than their maximum damage modifier with an attack. The attacker chooses how much of the damage modifier applies before making the attack roll. Attackers with the Full Power flaw cannot pull punches with that attack. Critical Hits A Critical Hit increases an attack’s damage modifier by 5. A critical hit against a minion automatically knocks the minion helpless, no Toughness resistance allowed. Damage Conditions One or more of the following damage conditions apply to a damaged character. Injured Injured means the character has been battered and bruised and is in less than top condition. Each injured condition imposes a Cumulative -1 to your Toughness score against damage, putting the character closer to being taken out of the fight. Each Injured Condition that your character accrues also imposes a Cumulative -1 to Endurance checks for Extreme Activity. Stunned If your Toughness resistance is exceeded by 5 or more, in addition to the normal effects of being injured, the character is Stunned, losing one action on his next turn. A character who suffers two or more Stunned results loses both of his actions for the next turn and cannot act (becoming Flat-Footed). This lasts until just before the attacker’s turn in the initiative order on the following round. Staggered A truly punishing blow will knock an opponent to his or her knees, leaving them barely hanging on, assuming they can even cling to consciousness! In addition to being Injured and Stunned, a character who is Staggered suffers additional penalties. A staggered character can hold on and is able to take only one action per turn. In addition, a character who is staggered who suffers another staggered result is knocked Unconscious. Unconscious A staggered character who suffers another staggered result is knocked unconscious and helpless. What befalls an unconscious character depends on the attack's descriptor and the tone of the game. Recuperation With rest, characters can make Recuperation checks (DC 10) to recover from their damage conditions. The frequency of the checks is based on the severity of the condition. The Regeneration FX speeds up a character's recuperation checks. Injured Once per hour of rest, characters can make a Recuperation check (DC 10). If successful, they remove one Injured condition. If the check fails, the character can make another in one hour, with a Cumulative +1 for each failed check. All characters recover at least one Injured condition per day automatically. Staggered Once per hour of rest, characters can make a Recuperation check (DC 10). If successful, they remove the Staggered damage condition. If the check fails, the character can make another in one hour, with a Cumulative +1 for each failed check. Unconscious Once per minute, characters can make a Recuperation check (DC 10). If successful, they remove the Unconscious damage condition. If the check fails, the character can make another in one minute, with a Cumulative +1 for each failed check. Dying characters must first stabilize before they can recover from unconsciousness. Ability Damage Certain FX cause a temporary loss of ability score points. FX such as Drain specify how quickly characters recover from this loss, usually 1 point per round, modified by things like Slow Fade. Cases where characters lose ability score points due to things like environmental conditions, illness, or similar effects is called ability damage. Ability damage is temporary; once the condition causing it is removed, the character recovers lost ability score points at a rate of 1 per day. The Healing FX can speed this recuperation, as can ranks in Regeneration. If reduced below 0, an ability score might be Crippled. A character recovers from having an ability score Crippled after healing at least 1 lost ability point (even if the score is still negative, though note that this character will still be quite weak until more points are healed!). Crippled Ability Scores If one of your character's ability scores drops to 0 or below during gameplay for any reason, that score has a chance to become crippled and the character suffers more serious effects. Whenever a character suffers an effect that actually reduces an ability score to 0 or less (such as the Drain FX; simply inflicting a penalty on a character isn't enough), the character must immediately check a resistance to see whether or not the ability score has been crippled. For Physical ability scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution), make the check with Fortitude. For Mental ability scores (Intelligence, Awareness, and Charisma), make the check with Will. The DC to avoid being Crippled on this check is equal to 10 + the effect modifier which reduced the ability score. If this check is failed, the ability score is Crippled. Crippled Strength means the character collapses, helpless and unable to move. Crippled Dexterity means the character is paralyzed and helpless. Crippled Constitution means the character is dying and cannot stabilize. Crippled Intelligence, Awareness, or Charisma means the hero is unconscious and incapable of waking until the score is restored to at least -5. Crippled ability scores usually result from an FX affecting your character. An ability score lowered below -5 during character creation is actually nonexistent; characters only suffer the effects of debilitated abilities if an ability score is lowered to 0 during play. Damaging Objects Nonliving objects are affected by damage somewhat differently than characters. Each object has a Toughness score representing how well it resists damage. An object’s Toughness works like a character’s Toughness resistance. To determine how much damage an object takes from an attack, roll against its Toughness resistance as normal. Damage to Objects An injured object is damaged and suffers the normal Cumulative -1 per condition further Toughness resistances. A staggered object is badly damaged. Staggered equipment and devices no longer function, while staggered barriers have holes punched through them, and other disabled objects may be bent, deformed, or otherwise damaged. An unconscious object is destroyed. Thus objects require two staggered results to be destroyed. Damaged objects can be repaired. It's up to the GM whether or not a destroyed object is repairable; if it is, the difficulty of the check is the same as creating an entirely new item. Ineffective Attacks The GM may decide certain attacks just can't effectively damage certain objects. For example, it's very difficult breaking down an iron door with a knife, or cutting a cable with a club. In these cases the GM may rule an attack inflicts no damage to the object at all (the object effectively has Immunity to that form of damage). Effective Attacks The GM may likewise rule certain attacks are especially effective against some objects. For example, it's easy to light a curtain on fire or rip a piece of cloth. In these cases the GM may increase your damage bonus against the object or simply say the object is automatically destroyed by a successful attack (the object effectively has a Vulnerability to that form of damage). Heavy Objects The Toughness resistance given on the Substance Toughness Table are for approximately one inch of the material. Heavier objects lower their thresholds on the Toughness Resistance Table by 1 per increase in thickness on the Time and Value Progression Table. So one level of increase means the object is staggered if the check overcomes their resistance by 11 or more. So a foot-thick stone wall has Toughness 8, but the attack must succeed on a Toughness resistance by 13 or more to stagger the object. This means heavy objects can generally suffer more hits and heavier damage before they’re disabled or destroyed. Damaging Devices Devices have a Toughness of 10 + the device's rank for damage purposes. Breaking Objects If you want to attack an object that you have in-hand or that no one is preventing you from attacking, such as smashing down a door, bending a metal bar, snapping bonds, or cutting through a wall with a Damage FX, you can apply force more effectively. This requires two actions. Instead of rolling, assume that you take 10 on your damage result. Might adds +1 per rank to your normal Strength for damaging objects in this way (and only in this way). If your damage modifier is equal to the object’s Toughness, you break it, 5 or more than the object's Toughness, you destroy it automatically. Breaking Sections of Oversized Objects Objects of increased Size are harder to damage, but only overall. While an Awesome-sized office building might be extremely durable to the attacks of Medium-sized attackers, it doesn't make breaking through any particular section of wall in the building any harder than normal. When an attacker is just trying to break through part of an object (such as a Medium character blasting a hole in a wall big enough for a Medium character to go through), the object is treated as being the size of the desired hole. In effect, each section of the object is treated as an individual object of a smaller size. So for example, consider a Huge stone wall, with a Toughness of 8. Normally, a Medium attacker would suffer 2 Penalties to attempts to damage the wall. But if the Medium attacker only wanted to use his or her weapon to blast a hole in the wall suitable for a Medium character to step through, most of the wall is irrelevant, as the attacker is focused on a smaller section, Thus this Medium-sized section of wall imposes no penalty on the Medium-sized attacker. This is particularly relevant when attackers are trying to break through a created object being used as a makeshift barrier during combat. Category:Rulebook Category:Action Category:Combat